long exposure, light painting and street portraits

In The Light Garden (Girl In Rose Garden Lightpainting), Kent

After lots of recent stranger/model work I wanted to keep up with my lightpainting. I’ve been doing lots of test sessions with the new TS-E 24mm to make sure I can use it blind come next months trip to Slovenia.

This is my third lightpainting using it, and I’m finding it hard not to use it on full swing. I guess that urge will diminish with familiarity, but I do like the effect it gives – here dropping out the unwanted fence and plumping up the blossom into cotton wool bokeh. All blur is in camera.

All lines were drawn in camera too – though I took the girl from my first frame, and roses from the third, so this is a composite of two shots.

My hands still bear the scars of tracing the roses in the dark. The green is from a plastic bottle top held over the torch; gels have never been strong enough to colour bright LED light to my satisfaction. Having discovered bottle tops I think I might start a collection for future use – they’re much less fiddly and far more effective than gel for this.

I’ll be catching up this evening – hope everyone is having a bright start to the week.